Disturbing trend in diving?

[Eric Sedletzky]

Our J-valve was our SPG. We were incredibly independent back then. We were explorers and we dove in places that had never been dove before. That independence doesn't have to change, but it depends on the instructor to do their due diligence to give them the tools to be independent.

It also depends on the geographical location and the local culture of the diving scene.

In the warm water locations an entire industry has been developed surrounding underwater tourism and guiding the masses in having diving experiences. Many of these people will only take diving this far and have no interest in going further, or don't live somewhere that they can dive, so vacations once a year or every other year are it.
They are happy being guided around in 40' looking at pretty fish.

I've noticed that the colder the water gets the more training the divers need and get just by default. As the water gets colder the U/W tourism decreases significantly. There simply isn't enough of an U/W tourist culture to support a guided industry. Yes there might be a few here and there but they are specialists, and a lot of it is one on one and expensive.
In this environment, OW divers are trained more to be independent divers just because the instructing staff knows they most likely will be diving independently with another buddy, if they choose to dive locally.
Where we run into trouble is when someone who has only dived in warm water in that tourist guided environment and perhaps earned an OW card, thinks they can handle cold water local dives. It can be quite a shock to them and a little overwhelming. There almost needs to be some sort of cold water acclimation class offered for them because many get their hats handed to them and quit after the first try. This is a shame.
I would suggest many to retake OW the cold water way, which would be a full course with all skills done in the environment that they will be diving in with an instructor and DM there to guide them through. But I could see how this could be viewed as offensive and embarrassing, hinting that they were played like suckers the first go around at a resort.

 

[boulderjohn]

It also depends on the geographical location and the local culture of the diving scene.

In the warm water locations an entire industry has been developed surrounding underwater tourism and guiding the masses in having diving experiences. Many of these people will only take diving this far and have no interest in going further, or don't live somewhere that they can dive, so vacations once a year or every other year are it.
They are happy being guided around in 40' looking at pretty fish.

I've noticed that the colder the water gets the more training the divers need and get just by default. As the water gets colder the U/W tourism decreases significantly. There simply isn't enough of an U/W tourist culture to support a guided industry. Yes there might be a few here and there but they are specialists, and a lot of it is one on one and expensive.
In this environment, OW divers are trained more to be independent divers just because the instructing staff knows they most likely will be diving independently with another buddy, if they choose to dive locally.
Where we run into trouble is when someone who has only dived in warm water in that tourist guided environment and perhaps earned an OW card, thinks they can handle cold water local dives. It can be quite a shock to them and a little overwhelming. There almost needs to be some sort of cold water acclimation class offered for them because many get their hats handed to them and quit after the first try. This is a shame.
I would suggest many to retake OW the cold water way, which would be a full course with all skills done in the environment that they will be diving in with an instructor and DM there to guide them through. But I could see how this could be viewed as offensive and embarrassing, hinting that they were played like suckers the first go around at a resort.

I once spent a week diving around San Carlos, Mexico, and one day I took the long boat ride out to San Miquel Island (IIRC) with the owner/operator of a dive shop, who was a SSI Course Director. He was doing the final work for an instructor student of his, and he was upset that SSI rules were changing, and his current student would be the last instructor he could certify completely on his own. His philosophy was to ask the instructor candidate what his or her plans were for an instructing career and then tailor the course to fit those needs. His current student wanted to work in tropical resorts, so the Course Director had eliminated everything from the course that did not deal with instructing in tropical resorts. In the future, he lamented, he would not be able to do that, because there would be an independent evaluation.

The point of that story is that there are many divers who will never experience certain dive environments. Many divers with many hundreds and even thousands of dives have never needed any more thermal protection than a 3 mm suit. Then if they do want a change, it is not as big a deal as you seem to think.

When I started diving, tropical diving was my only intent. I had not one iota of interest in doing anything other than that, and it was more than 5 years before I did any other kind of dive. The only real adjustment I had to make was dealing with the buoyancy swing in a 7mm wetsuit, and I did not find that challenging. It was several more years before I started to need a drysuit. That took a little more time, but it still wasn't a major change for me.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I once spent a week diving around San Carlos, Mexico, and one day I took the long boat ride out to San Miquel Island (IIRC) with the owner/operator of a dive shop, who was a SSI Course Director. He was doing the final work for an instructor student of his, and he was upset that SSI rules were changing, and his current student would be the last instructor he could certify completely on his own. His philosophy was to ask the instructor candidate what his or her plans were for an instructing career and then tailor the course to fit those needs. His current student wanted to work in tropical resorts, so the Course Director had eliminated everything from the course that did not deal with instructing in tropical resorts. In the future, he lamented, he would not be able to do that, because there would be an independent evaluation.

The point of that story is that there are many divers who will never experience certain dive environments. Many divers with many hundreds and even thousands of dives have never needed any more thermal protection than a 3 mm suit. Then if they do want a change, it is not as big a deal as you seem to think.

When I started diving, tropical diving was my only intent. I had not one iota of interest in doing anything other than that, and it was more than 5 years before I did any other kind of dive. The only real adjustment I had to make was dealing with the buoyancy swing in a 7mm wetsuit, and I did not find that challenging. It was several more years before I started to need a drysuit. That took a little more time, but it still wasn't a major change for me.

It may not be a big deal for you, but someone with 20-50 dives all in warm water always with a guide, it can be a big deal.

 

[boulderjohn]

It may not be a big deal for you, but someone with 20-50 dives all in warm water always with a guide, it can be a big deal.

More of a deal, sure, but not as big a deal as you are making it seem. Students who have never dived before learn in cold environments and do OK. A diver with 25 dives will not need a whole lot of additional training. I have taken such students through AOW classes in cold water with no issues at all.

 

[therookie]

It may not be a big deal for you, but someone with 20-50 dives all in warm water always with a guide, it can be a big deal.

You just described me perfectly, OP . 45 dives and counting, all in warm water, always with a guide.

Personally, I am not offended in the slightest by your earlier post either (although I can see how some perhaps would be at the idea that their initial cert wasn't "enough"). I recognize that I am in no way "competent" right now to go diving in the Pacific NW, or NorCal, or many other places without further instruction/guidance. Cold water diving is a different ballgame. And as I think I posted earlier here, I knew that the training we received was really for the environment where we got it, and that if we ever had notions of doing "real" dives we would need more guidance or else potentially find ourselves in serious trouble. Full credit to our instructor for making that clear, and I do not at all feel like we were short-changed on the instruction we received. Possibly I'm just a sucker but time was limited, and there is only so much you can teach 55+ year old people in a short amount of time...

No question, in my mind, those who get their certifications in more challenging environments are far more "competent" than I am. In my case retaking OW in its entirety might be extreme, but perhaps paying for some time with a local instructor, with instruction tailored for the environment (with the instructor knowing what my current experience is) would be appropriate. I certainly wouldn't expect an instructor to bring me to a different level of competence for free. I don't know how many fairly newly minted tropically trained divers have the same mindset that I do about being "out of their depth" or "over their head", so to speak (pun not intended but certainly seems appropriate in this context...)

But it's not just temperature. Coz is the same warm water tropical environment (heck it's the same Mezoamerianc reef!) where I have acquired all of my (limited) experience, but I have never dealt with the kind of currents that I read described on some dives there. Never used a reef hook, for example, and while I understand the "theory" of "ducking around a coral head", in practice I would want some additional training before I did a dive like that. Because to me, at my current level of experience, that would be concering too.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

More of a deal, sure, but not as big a deal as you are making it seem. Students who have never dived before learn in cold environments and do OK. A diver with 25 dives will not need a whole lot of additional training. I have taken such students through AOW classes in cold water with no issues at all.

Divers that learn in cold water have more time to mentally prepare and adapt. When they do their OW check out dives there's an instructor and dive masters around to coach them. The student also rises to the occasion and wants it, but not always. I've seen people who gear up with heavy 7mm wetsuit, thick hood, thick gloves, Just getting your fins on can be an exhausting chore, all the weight, the stuffed sausage feeling and they say no way, and sit out the ocean dives. They will do their check out ocean dives during their vacation coming up.
I'm talking about someone who certified in warm water, has only done guided dives once a year or less then decides to rent all the cold water stuff and is not prepared for it, mentally or physically, and there are those. But there are also people who only did warm water and do just fine crossing over, but normally they have more dives and more experience. They also have to want it. If it goes against the grain of their personal comfort parameters they will be miserable.
It helps if they go freediving a few times locally, that helps to acclimate them. We have those too and they are the spearos.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You just described me perfectly, OP . 45 dives and counting, all in warm water, always with a guide.

Personally, I am not offended in the slightest by your earlier post either (although I can see how some perhaps would be at the idea that their initial cert wasn't "enough"). I recognize that I am in no way "competent" right now to go diving in the Pacific NW, or NorCal, or many other places without further instruction/guidance. Cold water diving is a different ballgame. And as I think I posted earlier here, I knew that the training we received was really for the environment where we got it, and that if we ever had notions of doing "real" dives we would need more guidance or else potentially find ourselves in serious trouble. Full credit to our instructor for making that clear, and I do not at all feel like we were short-changed on the instruction we received. Possibly I'm just a sucker but time was limited, and there is only so much you can teach 55+ year old people in a short amount of time...

No question, in my mind, those who get their certifications in more challenging environments are far more "competent" than I am. In my case retaking OW in its entirety might be extreme, but perhaps paying for some time with a local instructor, with instruction tailored for the environment (with the instructor knowing what my current experience is) would be appropriate. I certainly wouldn't expect an instructor to bring me to a different level of competence for free. I don't know how many fairly newly minted tropically trained divers have the same mindset that I do about being "out of their depth" or "over their head", so to speak (pun not intended but certainly seems appropriate in this context...)

But it's not just temperature. Coz is the same warm water tropical environment (heck it's the same Mezoamerianc reef!) where I have acquired all of my (limited) experience, but I have never dealt with the kind of currents that I read described on some dives there. Never used a reef hook, for example, and while I understand the "theory" of "ducking around a coral head", in practice I would want some additional training before I did a dive like that. Because to me, at my current level of experience, that would be concering too.

We get divers in your bracket once in a while that want to help. We're going to start having free pre dive seminars at the shop just for people like yourself that want to participate in what we do.
One of the things I can stress is to keep things as simple as possible. less is definitely more as far as gear goes. There is already a lot going on with all the exposure protection, no need to add more gizmo's to make it more complicated.
We have a really good patient instructor that loves to take new to the area divers under her wing. Jennifer has been an instructor since she was 20 years old and she's 67 now. Started with NAUI and now does PADI for the shop, very thorough.
We do what we can to make people
comfortable and ease them into local diving.
If we were not doing this people that have no local experience would be hard pressed to get in and start diving locally.

 

[Leatherboot69]

Isn’t this all covered by the bit of PADI standards that says ‘certified to dive in conditions equal to or better than those in which they were trained’? It might be a training issue but it doesn’t sound like a Training Agency standards issue.

I also would not agree with the SBers who say (on other threads, mainly) that to be a ‘proper’ or ‘advanced’ diver one needs to be capable of being dropped into any conditions anywhere, hot or cold (by which they often mean the conditions in which they dive).

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Isn’t this all covered by the bit of PADI standards that says ‘certified to dive in conditions equal to or better than those in which they were trained’? It might be a training issue but it doesn’t sound like a Training Agency issue.

It's not an agency issue, the standards are clearly outlined. It would depend on the integrity of the instructor whether or not you got the training appropriate for the diving you'll be doing.

 

[therookie]

Isn’t this all covered by the bit of PADI standards that says ‘certified to dive in conditions equal to or better than those in which they were trained’? It might be a training issue but it doesn’t sound like a Training Agency standards issue.

Yes! Very good point. I believe it is an ISO standard actually, so not just PADI but any agency that adheres to ISO 24801-2.

Which I think is why our instructor made such an effort to make it clear to us exactly what our certification did, and did not, mean.